People

Meet the Directors: Dan Eylon

Dan Eylon discusses business integration and lenses on value

by Alessandro Tersigni , September 24, 2025

As director, I’ll be focusing on strategic planning and business integration. That involves knitting together operational aspects of our enterprise, from executive leadership down through the teams, and disseminating those ideas across the firm in cooperation with all our departments.

Meet the Principals: Shelley Ludman

Shelley Ludman discusses designing for continuity and change

by Alessandro Tersigni , September 17, 2025

I've always valued projects in which I get to work intimately with clients and communities to understand those significances. Supporting the evolution of spaces within living cultures is what’s made ERA such a great fit for me.

Meet the Principals: David Winterton

David Winterton discusses urban layers and heritage heterodoxy

by Alessandro Tersigni , September 12, 2025

What ERA offers is our ability to interpret those many formal and material registers and architectural codes, ascertain their value and meaning, share this with our clients and the broader public, and bring all of it together to reactivate old places and create meaningful new spaces for our contemporary world.

Meet the Principals: Samantha Irvine

Samantha Irvine on harmonizing conversations about the built environment

by Alessandro Tersigni , September 10, 2025

In an ideal world, great buildings are reused not because they must be, but because it makes sense from the perspective of the people who use them, the contribution they make to the public realm, in terms of good architecture, and the sustainability imperative they serve. When owners or users value a place and want to build on that value, that's when we do our best work.

Meet the Principals: Jan Kubanek

Jan Kubanek discusses conservation and public good

by Alessandro Tersigni , August 25, 2025

ERA isn’t a typical architecture firm. Collaboration is at the core of everything we do — we’re used to working closely with other architects and consultants to deliver our projects. We also take a more interdisciplinary approach than most, often getting involved in areas of a project that go well beyond standard architectural practice.

Meet the Principals: Philip Evans

Philip Evans discusses value and outcome in the built environment

by Alessandro Tersigni , August 15, 2025

I don’t think our profession has fully settled or articulated what it is yet. Heritage — as just one of many public benefits — is steadily broadening as a concept, and it remains incredibly difficult to define.

Meet the Principals: Graeme Stewart

Graeme Stewart discusses legacies and transformations

by Alessandro Tersigni , August 6, 2025

ERA is fundamentally grounded in place. We always start with something — whether a site, city block, community vision, landscape, or a set of ideas. We’re usually exploring particular ways of stewarding what exists and enabling some kind of thoughtful transformation. That’s been true since ERA was a firm of 12 people. In the early days, the question in Toronto’s collective consciousness was, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could imagine that something could transform?” Today, we take transformation as granted. The goal is to ensure it’s meaningful.

Meet the Principals: Victoria Angel

Victoria Angel discusses constructive debate and living heritage

by Alessandro Tersigni , July 31, 2025

I see ERA’s work as translating contemporary place-based theories and ideas into practice. We’ve tended to push the field of conservation by tackling complex problems and developing innovative strategies, approaches, and tools through those crucibles. One of the most interesting things about ERA is that we embrace the diversity of expertise and perspectives that exist across our studios. We have this incredible breadth of practice that fosters constructive debates and discussion.

Meet the Principals: Ya’el Santopinto 

Ya’el Santopinto discusses ERA’s radical practice

by Alessandro Tersigni , July 11, 2025

We're not demolishing buildings — we're renewing them. In the context of our current housing crisis, it turns out that preserving housing is, in fact, supplying housing. The work that our studio does is less about preserving architectural expression and more about making a particular kind of community possible, but fundamentally, we’re all using a unique set of skills to tackle challenges with our built forms.

Meet the Principals: Scott Weir

Scott Weir discusses ERA’s approach to renewing interesting places

by Alessandro Tersigni , June 26, 2025

There are all these architectural conversations out there, and our job is to be as open as possible and see where there are ways to draw out something new and complementary from what we've already got by telling a story.

Meet the Principals: Andrew Pruss

Andrew Pruss discusses ERA’s collaborative lenses on change

by Alessandro Tersigni , June 20, 2025

ERA started small, but with a multidisciplinary approach. We’ve since grown to fulfil our aspiration and build our capacity so we can work with existing places at every stage and scale: pre-planning, policy, strategy, and implementation, not just with architecture but also landscapes and intangible management.

Meet the Principals: Michael McClelland

Michael McClelland discusses evolution and innovation at ERA

by Alessandro Tersigni , June 13, 2025

For 35 years, ERA Architects has been a strategic thought leader in understanding the ever-evolving phenomenon of heritage. As the firm evolves, so does our approach to working with heritage. Our interdisciplinary talents, insights, and relationships to the existing built environment lead us to understand places as living through time. As people, communities, values, and...

Small but mighty! ERA’s Women-led Ottawa team

by ERA Architects , March 7, 2025

ERA is proud to celebrate International Women’s Day by spotlighting our "small-but-mighty" women-led Ottawa office.

Reading and Writing Frank Darling: David Winterton on Toronto Edwardian  

by Alessandro Tersigni , February 17, 2025

ERA senior associate and architectural historian David Winterton recently completed the first-ever monograph on arguably the city’s most important architect: Frank Darling.

ERA is pleased to announce our 2025 staff promotions

by ERA Architects , February 7, 2025

As we enter another exciting year at ERA, we are pleased to announce our 2025 staff promotions.

50th anniversary oral history of Robarts Library features Michael McClelland   

by Alessandro Tersigni , December 7, 2023

Spacing recently published an oral history reflecting on the five-decade life of one of Canada’s most recognizable Brutalist buildings: the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library. It features commentary by ERA’s Michael McClelland as well as Carole Moore (University of Toronto Chief Librarian, 1986-2011), Gary McCluskie (Diamond Schmitt), and writer Shawn Micallef. The piece explores Robarts Library’s design antecedents, materiality, and scale—it was the...

Graeme Stewart on the interdisciplinary brilliance of George Baird

by Graeme Stewart , December 5, 2023

After the passing of George Baird in October, ERA principal Graeme Stewart reflected in Azure Magazine on his relationship with the architectural theorist and educator and the great value of engaging with architecture and urbanism through an interdisciplinary prism. Baird has been described as a member of what is sometimes referred to as “The Toronto...

Michael McClelland talks taste, class, and conservation in Azure Magazine

by Michael McClelland , November 29, 2023

Azure Magazine‘s Stefan Novakovic recently interviewed ERA principal Michael McClelland about the relationships between taste, social class, and conservation and how they determine the ways we see and live in cities. As our understanding of heritage continues to evolve and broaden to include more diverse forms of value, this historical and practical look at the...

Celebrating Claude Cormier 

by Alessandro Tersigni , October 2, 2023

The trailblazing Quebecois landscape architect Claude Cormier passed away two weeks ago after a thirty-year career spent creating many of Canada’s most lauded and inventive public spaces. Known for his joyful yet probing designs, Claude often upended status quos. Projects like Sugar Beach and Berczy Park resist traditional municipal aesthetics as much as they celebrate...

Illustration as a tool of clarity: Q&A with Daniel Rotsztain 

by Alessandro Tersigni , September 20, 2023

ERA is excited to welcome Daniel Rotsztain as the firm’s first Artist-in-Residence. Known as the Urban Geographer, Daniel is a Toronto-based illustrator, writer, and community activator who contributes to urbanist discourses, practices, and modes of thinking in a variety of ways. He received a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Guelph and...

Breaking down barriers in the landscape: Q&A with Brendan Stewart

by Alessandro Tersigni , July 21, 2023

Continuing our efforts to engage with landscape in foundational and innovative ways, ERA welcomes long-time collaborator Brendan Stewart back to the firm as a Senior Advisor on landscape practice. Brendan brings years of experience in landscape discourse and architecture from across the sectors of academia, industry, and nonprofit grassroots initiatives. Having studied with Randy Hester...

Lisa Prosper, ERA, and cultural landscapes

by Michael McClelland , July 10, 2023

ERA Architects is thrilled to welcome Lisa Prosper as the firm’s Senior Advisor with expertise in Indigenous heritage, cultural landscapes and World Heritage. Lisa brings an Indigenous perspective to her work in cultural landscapes and cultural heritage as they intersect with planning, design, interpretation, and engagement.   Lisa’s work is informed by diverse and extensive experience...

Dragon Centre Stories: Perspectives on Multi-Cultural Retail and Suburban Cultural Heritage 

by Alexis Cohen , November 15, 2022

Opened in 1984 in Agincourt, Scarborough, Dragon Centre was North America’s first indoor Chinese mall. Its developers — brothers Daniel and Henry Hung, originally from Hong Kong — adapted an old roller-skating rink into a mall serving the Greater Toronto Area’s growing Chinese-Canadian population. Combining Hong Kong’s dense commercial markets and the big box North...

Eat More Scarborough Food Tour 

by ERA Staff , August 26, 2022

Scarborough has long been a landing place for newcomers to Toronto. People from all over the world come to this sprawling borough to get a foothold and find community in a new megacity — often far from home in every sense of the word.  One of the ways people find that foothold and community is...